How do I wean my 5.5 month old from nursing to sleep at night?

I have a 2 1/2 year old and a 5 1/2 month old. They share a room, as of 2 days ago. The baby (DS) has been in the Arm's Reach in our room since birth, and he's EBF. He was a decent sleeper up until he hit a growth spurt, at which point he has started to wake up once a night. I know once a night isn't so bad, but my 2 1/2 year old wakes up quite often once a night to use the potty or because she cant' find her lovey, so I may be up 2 to 3 times a night. The sleep deprivation is killing me. I'm barely functional. I'm not sure how we got here (actually, it's because I'm so tired, work FT, that we have just been in survival mode) but I realized that DS is now dependent on either me or the swing to fall asleep. My older one quit nursing at 5 1/2 months and she was a finger sucker, so I didn't have this issue with her. But DS is a boobie boy and does not take his fingers/thumb or a paci. Actually, I'M the paci.

So my question is, how do I go about weaning him from me as his mechanism to fall asleep? Do I nurse him til drowsy, then put him down? Do I let him CIO when he wakes at night, at least gradually? (The only problem with this is the room sharing. We only have 2 bedrooms, so there is no other place for them to sleep). Has anyone successfully done this? I'd love to hear some suggestions or success stories.

I had this same problem. What worked for us was gradually moving nursing to the beginning of our routine. I began nursing til drowsy, then nursing before storytime, then nursing before pjs and voila! no more nursing to sleep for bedtime.

For motn wakings I wait 15min and do a 1-2min check and then leave and won't go back in for another 20min (but it's never gotten to that point). My LO is still waking up for a feeding once and she's 7.5mo. I have no experience with the room sharing though! We're in a 1bd and during ST LO had the room all to herself while I slept in the living room lol